Niagara Motel by Ashley Little Read Free Book Online Page B

into the hungry hole. Then Gina’s pinky finger moved, and I could breathe again and the floor closed up and everything went back to its place. She was sleeping with her eyes open, which she sometimes did, but I had forgotten. I wondered if she was sleeping like a normal person or if she’d had a sleep attack. I went to the vending machine and bought a pack of Skittles. Then I went to the nurse’s station and talked to Heather, the fat nurse with the black hairs growing out of her chin. Heather wore scrubs with hearts and teddy bears on them and she usually gave me a honey-dip donut on Saturdays if there were any left. She was the nicest nurse in there. I had thought that all nurses would be nice, but it’s not true. Most of them are too busy to even say hi, and some of them scowled at me if I came in after visiting hours. Heather said Gina had been like that for awhile and they knew she was narcoleptic so they just made sure that she was breathing and her heart was beating, and they let her sleep with her eyes open.
    â€œDo you want to wake her up?” Heather asked.
    I shrugged and offered Heather some Skittles.
    â€œNo thanks, hon. I’m trying a new diet.”
    â€œThe kind where you eat less and exercise more?”
    She laughed. “Something like that.”
    â€œBecause that’s the only kind of diet that works.”
    She smiled for a millisecond then held out her hand, and I poured a pile of Skittles into it.
    â€œWhen is Dr Chopra going to let Gina out of here?”
    â€œI don’t know, sweetie.”
    â€œCan I talk to her?”
    â€œTo Dr Chopra?”
    â€œYeah.”
    Heather looked down at her clipboard, then back up at me. “She’s not in today.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œIt’s her day off.”
    â€œBut she’s a doctor.”
    â€œEveryone gets a day off once in awhile, kiddo.”
    â€œNot me.”
    â€œDo you have a job?”
    â€œYeah, the hardest job there is.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œBeing a kid.”
    â€œHa! You think that’s hard, you should try being a woman!” She popped the whole handful of Skittles into her mouth and smiled big at me to show me her rainbow teeth as she chewed them up. I laughed and showed her a mouth-rainbow too.

    That night the dinner at Bright Light was pork chops, boiled potatoes, and broccoli. But the pork chops were overdone and rubber-chewy and Dirtbag Daryl kept going on about how everyone was masticating so hard and how the pork chops were really difficult to masticate. He kept saying masticate this and masticate that, and at first it was really obnoxious and people told him to shut the hell up. Meredith threw a piece of broccoli at him but he kept on doing it and eventually everyone started cracking up, even Brian, whowas the SOD, which stands for Staff On Duty. The word masticate means chew and it sounds like the word masturbate which means jerking-off for boys and humping a pillow for girls. I pictured a girl humping a pork chop which is totally ridiculous, so then I started cracking up too. I looked around the table at everyone laughing. Kyle’s face was turning red, Jayleen was choking on her milk from laughing so hard, and Josh was snorting like a pig, which made everyone laugh even harder, and for a minute, you could almost believe that we were a regular family, just sitting around the table, masticating our pork chops, laughing at our idiot brother. The laugh session seemed to go on and on, and I was glad Gina wasn’t there because she always gets a sleep attack when she laughs hard like that. Finally, it faded out. Shawn moaned. Tiffany wiped tears from her eyes. Then everyone got really quiet, even Dirtbag Daryl. There was a strange heaviness upon us, like someone had just made us all a promise that we knew they couldn’t keep. Kids started to get up and put their plates in the dishwasher. Chairs scraped against the tile